Our business is looking at purchasing some 3rd party software to aid in our render management.

We have looked at tequila scream and butterfly net render. Any Opinions, pros/cons for either software from experienced users? Are there any other standout products at the moment that I have missed?

Ta in advance matey's:)

The Doc.

roguenroll

07-22-2003, 09:19 AM

I've heard the Matador is fast, sorry no real experience to help you compare, but check it out.

Dr Dardis

07-22-2003, 10:11 AM

Yeah, Thanks roguenroll :),

I have just found that one, seems to be quite flashy.

What I really would like is to hear from people who do a lot of network rendering, because I have to do a bunch soon. I would like to findout what software people have been using in their pipeline, and the pro's and con's of their choice.

It's not a huge investment, but it seems like a specialist development field. I do not want to find myself regretting my purchase, or coming in in the mornings to find lost rendertime or crashing has gone on, I dread the panic that will ensue if that happens (tight deadline).

Again, thanks

The Doc.

TRick

07-22-2003, 11:52 AM

Used Tequila since the beginning, rendered zillions of frames and had nil problemos. I think that says enough. Since it is a LWSN based network-renderer the only disadvantage is LWSN's irregularities. You have to know them all to prevent startup problem's and/or crashes in Tequila. Tequila itself runs fine....

Eugeny

07-22-2003, 12:51 PM

I use Butterfly Net Render here (Adventure Publishing) on 30 processors ...
Almost work fine but some times we have problems with saving frames i.e. frame saved but it's broken. The only way to get them is load to After FX and see which frame are broken. This happen especially with JPG's ... But may be it's only network overload problem :shrug:
We have basic version (Standart Studio) that not allowing to make priority for the jobs. It's really annoying because ones all nodes are rendering some job after uploading another job Butterfly stops all rendering and starting to render newly uploaded job !
So if u going with Butterfly get the Pro version ( or the best one i just don't remember the names of all versions).
There is many really handy features like plugins installation, e mail verification , restarting failure nodes ...
As i say it's almost great, but i will wait for Siggrath , may be LW 8 will have some good network render handler (like Max for example) .

Dr Dardis

07-23-2003, 02:28 AM

Thanks guys,

Yeah, corrupt frames is a bit worrying in BNR, feedback on this and other forums have said good things about tequila..

hmmm. I am going to try a few tests with the various demos, including Matador, which looks nice also... will let you know what I find.

Eugeny: Have you seen this tool? Its done by an Aussie firm, specifically for BNR

http://www.sector3.com.au/renderme.asp

Might be useful in solving your render priority problem... Quite nifty I am led to believe.

Thanks again to all,

The Doc.

:thumbsup:

3DDave

07-23-2003, 06:48 AM

Tequila Scream all the way!!

I have rendered tons of HD frames and I have yet to have one render fail because of Tequila. Typical problems are usually releated to network issues or plugin problems. For the price and features you can't beat it.

Now if managing a 24/7 farm is going to be your job all day you will want a more information rich program like Spider.

eben

07-23-2003, 07:05 AM

i use amelto...very powerful and more feature to come...

http://www.rayserver.com/

regards,

Eben.

Dr Dardis

07-23-2003, 08:54 AM

Thanks 3dDave and eben,

Ameletto does look interesting. We have jsut done a couple of passes with the Tequila scream demo, and it is working nicely over 6 machines. It seems to have most of the features that we need at this stage.

might check out spider as well!

cheers,

The Doc.

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